Polkas & Beer – Day 9 – Revenge

I was compelled to write this tune after watching an exposé on the history of the real Mary Magdalen. The documentary outlined how the details of her life were rewritten to suit church dogma — church fathers prefer their women repentant and sexually submissive rather than capable and equal.*

Imagine your reality, your actual life story, being distorted by a bunch of guys in funny hats who consider women to be inferior. Ticked me off. I had to write a piece in her honor.

Magdalena’s Revenge is a polka / frailach hybrid in the key of C minor. A frailach (freylekh, freylech, fraylich, freilich) is Jewish celebratory dance form also in 2/4 meter. It is one of our signature tunes and super fun to play.

I go into detail on the backstory of Magdalena’s Revenge in this short video.

THE BEER PAIRINGS

Strong women doing beer is the parameter for this beer pairing.

When next I get to Pennsylvania I will head straight to Stoud’ts Brewery in Adamstown to try the Pils. This brewery was created in 1987 by Carol Stoudt – “first female brewmaster since Prohibition”.

Eventually, Magdalene, as a denuded object of Renaissance and Baroque painterly preoccupation, became a figure of nothing less than holy pornography, guaranteeing the ever-lustful harlot—if lustful now for the ecstasy of holiness—a permanent place in the Catholic imagination.